(TibetanReview.net, May09’24) —Authorities in a part of the historically Tibetan province of Kham, which now forms part of the People’s Republic of China’s Sichuan province, have banned students from speaking in their mother tongue when communicating amongst themselves or with their teachers, reported the Tibetan service of rfa.org May 8, citing two sources from inside Tibet.
Students and teachers at elementary, middle and high schools in Nyagchu (Chinese: Yajiang) county are required to use only Mandarin Chinese in their communications, the report cited the sources as saying, requesting anonymity for their personal safety.
The report said that all the elementary schools in each of Nyagchu county’s six towns and 10 villages were now residential schools, which are “colonial-style” facilities where Tibetan children are coercively separated from their families and taught a Chinese-language curriculum.
The move is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ongoing campaign to Sinicize Tibet – and other so-called ethnic minority regions – and to combat “ethnic minority exceptionalism” for this purpose.
The report noted that since 2020, the Chinese government further tightened restrictions on language rights in Tibetan regions, forcing the closure of privately-run Tibetan schools and intensifying Chinese-language education in the name of promoting uniformity in the use of textbooks and instructional materials. This was followed, in 2021, by imposition of a ban on Tibetan children from participating in informal Tibetan language classes or workshops during their winter breaks.
Besides, the source have said, authorities have also restricted the school holidays in order to limit the children’s interactions in their mother tongue amongst themselves and with their families.
“Traditional breaks like spring and summer holidays, which allowed for family time, have been eliminated, forcing children to remain in boarding schools for extended periods,” one of the two sources has said.
Besides, while in the past, the Chinese government-run boarding schools allowed Tibetan children to return home on weekends and also provided longer breaks during the April-June period so they could help their families with the caterpillar fungus hunting, these have been stopped.
The stoppage of the caterpillar fungus season break led to a protest by parents in late April this year in Tengchen (Dengqen) county of Chamdo City, Tibet Autonomous Region, as it is an important source of livelihood for the local Tibetans.